Beach Safety Programmes

India has about 7000km of coastline. With more people using the beach and sea for pleasure than ever before, there is a requirement for beach safety programmes to be organized across the coastline towns and cities of the country. The RLSS (I) believes that providing beach safety services will help save many more lives.

As has been done in Vishakhapatnam, Goa and Ganapatipule we motivate 30 to 40 young swimmers from a village contiguous to a beach and teach them "Beach Life Guarding". They are then encouraged to form a club/ association of lifesavers and take over the responsibility of guarding "THEIR" beach. They compete in lifesaving events to improve their skills and fitness, creating a "Surf Sport" lifestyle for the club members of all ages. They do it in turn so that the required number of lifeguards is available on duty while swimming is in progress. Unless we try, we will never know if the concept of guarding beaches by a volunteer force, albeit with incentives will succeed all along the coast in India. It works very well in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and many other countries. Motivating school and college students to join in can be a very rewarding experience.